Today (Monday 12th) is looking poor for my website by 12:00pm.

I guess we are all suffering a bit this month.

Normally I don't monitor adsense earnings that much but this morning it was funny as usual...

One moment I see 1.50 few minutes later 0.95. Few hours later 5.50 few minutes later 4.85 and so on and so on. At the end of the moment they take another 8 to 10 percent but you can't do much about it in a system of a monopoly. Don't worry my ads aren't placed near clickable items or whatever and I've my website for more than 9 years now. Strangest part of all is that when I'm advertising I never get money back at the end of the month so how can they hold money from publishers?

Invalid clicks are not charged, officially. That's why.

I think stat stuck or something

April not being to kind to me so far, impressions and CPC are down quite a bit.

@Jori, so if publishers are losing clicks almost real-time and also get a clawback at the end of the month it doesn't make sense for advertisers who don't get money back at the end of the month.

From the TOS

If Google does not deliver Ads to the selected Targets or Destinations, then Customer’s sole remedy is to make a claim for advertising credits within the Claim Period, after which Google will issue the credits following claim validation which must be used by the Use-By Date. Customer understands that third parties may generate impressions or clicks on Customer’s Ads for prohibited or improper purposes and if that happens, Customer’s sole remedy is to make a claim for advertising credits within the Claim Period, after which Google will issue the credits following claim validation, which must be used by the Use-By Date.

I don't understand everything.

Lol so how can a customer know whether clicks where valid or not :-(

My Ad rates are still down, What about others?

I've returned to AdSense with two ad units on mobile and two on desktop.

Is it normal for pageviews to drop on AdSense when there are fewer ad units?

Only impressions, but not page views as far as I know.

When advertisers become fewer, pageviews will drop. That seems to be the case this month.

Yes, but not by having less as units on a page, only impressions will be lower and not page views on that case.

[edited by: allhearts at 3:23 pm (utc) on Apr 13, 2021]

When advertisers become fewer, pageviews will drop.

Pageviews has nothing to do with advertisers, it has to do with users. When advertisers become fewer, prices drop and spam ads increase. In the extreme coverage would drop.

The same happened with me @MayankParmar. The page views dropped by 10 percent and sometimes 20 when I removed a few ad units. Not sure if they are related.

@NickMNS

Pageviews has nothing to do with advertisers.

That's incorrect. Adsense page views are based on the pages that display Adsense ads. If no Adsense ads are displayed, which does occur frequently (all ad slots on a page are empty), then Adsense does NOT count those as pageviews. That's one of the many reasons why there's a discrepancy between on-site analytics and Adsense analytics (Not to be confused with Google Analytics). Fewer advertisers. Fewer ads to display. Fewer pages that display ads. Lower Adsense Pageviews.

Then what about adblock users. Maybe those discrepancies are due to that as well.

@Lisa01

That could be a reason too. I'm not certain. Additionally, if users leaves a page too soon (before all of the scripts are loaded), that could result in Google not counting it as a page view. I do know this, there are certain pages on my websites where Adsense will not display ads...and not because of any rules violations.

[edited by: gatormark at 6:33 pm (utc) on Apr 13, 2021]

I get that. It didn't happen with me before as it's happening now. There's always a difference of around 10 percent and sometimes 20. It's happening since Oct or Nov 2020.

If no Adsense ads are displayed, which does occur frequently (all ad slots on a page are empty), then Adsense does NOT count those as pageviews

This is incorrect. When ad slots go unfilled, a pageview is still recorded, but coverage is reduced. Otherwise based on your logic, coverage would always be at 100%*. Basically if the Adsense code is called a pageview is recorded. As to discrepancies between GA and AdSense, this can be due to a wide variety of factors, including what @Lisa01 points out, Ad-blockers. As Ad-blockers prevent AdSense code from executing page-views are not counted. Other examples are the use of AMP, lazy loading ads, and using Ad-Manager to server AdSense ads, are among just a few.

*Note about coverage, you could technically have less 100% if you only count partial fills, but you could never have 0% coverage. I have had 0% coverage on specific pages when I was experiencing issue with "brand-safety" many years ago.

@NickMNS

I'll research that. Your reasoning does makes sense.

@NickMNS, @gatormark

I think @NickMNS is correct, cause I have also see this pageviews drop when is less ads, but when I do check the traffics I always found that there is a drop on traffic too specially organic from google search.

So it is possible that is just a coincidence that pageviews drop because a drop of traffics happened when ads are low.

Normally I found no pageviews drop when ads are low, except tow times (this one of them).

@NickMNS

Otherwise based on your logic, coverage would always be at 100%*.

I think you are correct about the page views. Concerning coverage, Adsense states: "If you have 3 ad units on a page, you'll generate 3 ad requests. If two of these ad units display ads and one displays no ads, the coverage for this page would be 66.67%."

If this is the case, even if you had at least one ad display on every page, that would not be 100% coverage...weird.

If this is the case, even if you had at least one ad display on every page, that would not be 100% coverage...weird.

Yes I realized this and that is why I added the remark at the bottom of the post regarding 0% coverage. You could never have 0% coverage, and I have had 0% coverage.

Recently I used the Samsung(?) browser on my phone and a message showed up to browse without ads. Such developments are also hurting our business. I'm not really sure what's happening but it seems that also my header bidding is performing below normal and than I'm talking about CPM not visitors, etc.

Ad blocking has been of all ages. My personal take on this is that visitors who don't want to see ads are also not likely to click on them would ads have been available. The main loss is therefore probably only on the CPM ads, not on the CPC ads.

I know that ad blocking has been of all ages but not much visitors block my ads because than they get a popup. It works great but when browsers not showing ads there's no popup and browsers without serving ads isn't of all ages.

It seems like the Adsense numbers have picked up today. What are you seeing?

@Lisa01 Do you use AdX or other ad networks?

As far as I can recall, AdSense had started reporting inaccurate pageviews when I used AdX a few years ago. I am using AdX again and the problem is back or there is a huge spike in adblocker users (30%).